CD direct to monobloks?

To see if you're a likely candidate for bypassing your preamp you can try an experiment: take any CD you know is comparatively quietly recorded and hook up your CD straight into the mono's, but be sure to start with your volume on the CDP all the way down. Try a track that starts off low in volume and slowly builds, if you can. Gradually increase volume until you get to either the loudest point you'd ever be willing to listen to it or as loud as your system will safely tolerate. If you can consider this volume level to be satisfactory to you in the long run as a maximum for your tastes, then you can very likely benefit from going preampless with your system the way it is. But, if that max volume level is in fact too low for you, even with normally recorded CD's, then you'd have to consider some future gear swapping to get it to come out right (either a different amp with a higher gain, or speakers that are more efficient, or even both, if you needed or wanted to).

What she said. Digital volume control has no impedance matching vs analog volume control. Listen first to it without a pre-amp. is the resolution and detail what you like? You eliminate a set of interconnect cables and a pre-amp if you go direct. I'm all for this approact as long as there is no impedance issues. But, since you were considering a pre-amp, go "borrow" a few from a good dealer in your price rance and A/B them vs CD direct. You can do this anytime.

enjoy

A quality tube preamp is the most important component in the audio chain.

Thank you all for your responses! It seems that I got some experimentation to do, which is part of the joy of this hobby. Thanks again!